Integra Software Services – Keeping the Digital Content Solutions Industry from India on the World Map

Integra Software Services – Keeping the Digital Content Solutions Industry from India on the World Map

The Digital Content Industry has proven to be the most disruptive force across the economy. Apart from complete transformation on our perception of education and formalized training, the industry has made considerable strides in keeping up with a perpetual onslaught of new applications, technologies, as well as tactics, to reach the target audience.

Integra Software Services has been one of the leading companies in the publishing and digital content solutions space, setting benchmarks through services and technology innovations for over two and a half decades now.

Founded in 1994 by Sriram Subramanya and Anu Sriram as a partnership firm and incorporated as a private limited company in 2000, Integra is in a leadership position in the publishing solutions world, revving-up to the challenge of dynamic changes in the industry, brought about by technology and the ensuing market disruptions.

Since its inception, the company has relied on creating lasting customer experiences, while staying committed to its focus on building a trustworthy brand to all its stakeholders.

Beginnings of a Journey

Integra, along with its founder Sriram Subramanya, are all about striving for excellence.

Not only does Integra provide content enrichment and transformation services as an end-to-end content solutions provider, offering a wide spectrum of services, from development, editing to digital products for global publishers, it also caters complete solutions across all aspects of the digital & eLearning content lifecycle to non-publishing verticals such as – Learning and Organisational Development (L&OD) functions in corporates and educational institutions.

Today, while enjoying its presence in ten cities across six countries, two significant acquisitions in the US, a strong clientele of premium leaders and a highly-proficient team of 2000+ content and digital solutions professionals, Integra's growth trajectory is nothing but remarkable!

Content meets Strategy & Technology

Having begun as a publishing solutions-only provider, Integra today has transformed itself and has risen to a leadership position by expanding its capabilities in offering a wide spectrum of digital content solutions, content-focused technology solutions, workflow automations and cutting-edge content experiences in Extended Reality (XR) technologies (AR / VR / MR) to some of the world's leading brands.

They help their customers maximize return on content production investments and bring renewed focus on what they do best – delivering great content and learning experiences to their customers.

Integra works with many of world's leading publishers across segments i.e. Academic, Higher-Ed, ELT, and PreK-12 – many of whom they pride themselves on sustaining more than a decade of working relationship.

This longstanding relationship is witness to Integra's capabilities in delivering measurable business results through content solutions that drastically improves publishing cycle times, boosts productivity, consistent quality, and seamlessly navigates through technology disruptions.

Integra Milestones

Integra, along with its robust creative and techno-savvy minds has been striding on the path to success, while picking up several accolades along the journey. Outlined below are a few:

• Recognized with DivHERsity Awards 2019 and is one of the top 5 Most Innovative Practices in Women L&D Program by bringing Diversity to its workplace

• Crowned as one of India's best 100 companies for women to work with by Working Mother and AVTAR group for three consecutive years, 2016, 2017 and 2018

• Adjudged among the top 5 finalists for "Excellence in Gender Inclusivity" by NASSCOM in 2012

• Ranked #2 in customer satisfaction among global publishing BPO service providers in Data Monitor's Black Book of Outsourcing survey in 2009-10

• Award for "Excellence in Gender Inclusivity" by NASSCOM in 2009 

Sriram Subramanya on Integra's Growth Trajectory: how Integra is steering a wind of change in the Publishing Solutions Industry

How did you come up with your business idea?

The course of Integra's journey started while focusing on three areas – Auto ancilliary; my home ground in the professional journey, Agro-based; due to my family roots and IT, which was an emerging industry. High-tea sessions with a lot of industry professionals would end up with recommendations to start off in a sunrise industry.

Further, I evaluated at Software Services, Software Maintenance, Software Development and Product Development, and imputed in Software Services.

Considering the emerging market demand at that point in time, I chose to bring forth a start-up in the digital publishing services segment and grew the company today to a global leader in digital content solutions for the publishing and education services industry.

If you were to describe the state-of-the-art right now, where does Integra stands within the content transformation stage?

Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are a couple of disruptive technologies that we have come across in our times that are gaining momentum across industries and its widespread application; Integra has been investing in these capabilities over the past four years and have built a number of products and platforms which are adopted by large Global Publishers.

Also, for the education publishing industry, we offer a number of digital learning solutions like Instructional Design, Digital Content Development, HTML5 Content and Application, Audio/Video Services, Graphics Design & Animations. App Development and QA & Testing Services.

We are proud to be one of the firsts in our segment to offer publishers content development in Extended Reality (XR) technologies like Augmented reality (AR), Mixed reality (MR) and Virtual Reality (VR); as we work on Education content, we have built-in capabilities to include assessments within the XR environments, which will make the experience more enriching and will deliver on learning efficacy of an XR content product.

How do you think digital services are going to change the publishing industry in today's world?

Hi-Ed publishing segment is pacing up towards digital learning and as a result, a lot of publishers have started offering digital course material as a complement to traditional instructional materials.

Then there is a crop of new education content producers who offer main instructional content via digital media only. Adding more to the digital progress, school publishing segment is starting to move the digital way, but this is a slow process…

The Man Behind the Brand

Sriram Subramanya-The Founder, Managing Director and CEO for Integra

Expertise: Setting Organization's Vision and formulating strategic directions to future focus on Innovation, Product Development, Digital, Emerging Content Technologies

Sriram Subramanya, a first-generation-entrepreneur, the chief visionary and architect behind Integra's meteoric growth, he is the catalyst for implementing Integra's vision in a dynamically changing publishing industry.

Over the last two decades, the company has metamorphosed to become one of the top 10 Digital Content Services companies in India with a 2000+ strong employee force. Sriram has been ardently augmenting Integra's transformation to provide diversified, next-generation, digital-first services.

From laying the bedrock of Integra with just 5 people, he has fostered the organization to a home of 2000+ global workforce working from ten cities across six countries.

During the course of this exciting journey, he has been recognized by the industry and has won a plethora of awards.

·         He has co-authored the book, The Manual for Indian Start-ups — Tools to start and scale-up your new venture in 2017

·         Sriram's entrepreneurial story, Words Worth is featured in Rashmi Bansal's book, Take Me Home in 2014.

·         Recognized as one of the top 20 emerging entrepreneurs in Tamil Nadu by CII in 2010

·         The veteran has been recognized twice as a "Trailblazer" by Times of India in 2008 and 2011

·         Recognized as one of the top 20 emerging entrepreneurs in Tamil Nadu by CII in 2010.

In his entrepreneurial journey, Sriram has actively participated in multiple Industry forums and has chaired other positions, which include:

• An active member in CII –National Council for Start-ups for the past five years

• Southern Region council member of CII

• An active member of NASSCOM and Charter member of TIE

• Chairman, CII – Puducherry in 2008-2009

Believing in giving back to the industry and society, he works closely with industry bodies such as CII and NASSCOM and member of chambers such as Indo-American, Indo-German and Indo-Japan.

In his personal capacity, Sriram is also the Managing Trustee, taking care of 2 schools, which are 135-year-old educational institutions — Hindu Elementary School and Hindu Higher Secondary School in Maduranthakam, Tamil Nadu — that cater to the underprivileged children of the society and all education is provided free of cost.

Deeply committed toward working for the welfare of the underprivileged, social rehabilitation and rural upliftment, he established 'Sriram Charitable Trust' in 2006, which has benefited thousands of poor, sick, needy and underprivileged people in various areas.

Passionate about sustainable and organic farming, Sriram has set up his own "Model Organic Farm" which implements many nature-friendly farming practices including rainwater harvesting and traditional soil enrichment practices.

Sriram is also committed to afforestation and is in the process of creating an arboretum of a wide variety of plants and trees to provide a source of nature education to school and college students and also to help develop a model sustainable ecosystem around the farm.

In addition to this, he has been instrumental in planting around 40,000 trees in and around Pondicherry with about 4000 trees on his farm.

From here to the future

To polish its finesse, Integra is navigating its journey towards becoming a leader in developing content experiences in immersive technology, video-based learning solutions, innovative content technology and workflow products.